More than 100 people were reported killed yesterday in violence across Syria, as Turkey downplayed the Syrian shooting down of a Turkish plane while President Bashar al-Assad formed a new cabinet with key posts unchanged.
Turkey acknowledged that one of its warplanes may have violated Syrian airspace after Damascus confirmed shooting down the F-4 Phantom on Friday, in comments seen as a bid to cool the latest spat between the former allies.
"An unidentified aerial target violated Syrian airspace, coming from the west at a very low altitude and at high speed over territorial waters," a Syrian military spokesman told the official SANA news agency.
Anti-aircraft batteries hit the plane about a kilometre from the coast and it crashed some 10 kilometres off Latakia province, he added.